Three including Japanese woman and her child injured in knife attack in China

Japan embassy urges nationals to take precaution as ‘stabbings have been reported in public places’

Three people, including a Japanese woman and her child, were injured after a man attempted to attack a bus carrying students in Suzhou city of China in the latest knife attack on foreigners in the country.

An unidentified man, believed to be a Chinese national, attacked the Japanese individuals on Monday as they waited for the school bus.

The third person, a Chinese woman, who was on the bus was critically injured in the attack after she tried to intervene to stop the man from getting on the bus.

It was the latest stabbing attack on foreign nationals in the country.

Earlier this month, four US college instructors were stabbed and injured in an attack in a public park in the northeastern city of Jilin.

The Japanese embassy confirmed that the man was detained and the mother and child’s injuries were not serious.

In an email sent to Japanese nationals living in China, the Japanese embassy asked them to take precautions as stabbing incidents have occurred in various parts of China in public places including parks, schools and subways.

China appeared to downplay the incident, calling it isolated. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday the incident could have happened in any country in the world.

The mother was waiting at the bus stop to pick up her child from a nearby Japanese school when the attack happened, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

Two buses were at the stop at the time of the attack, a woman who was at the scene told NHK. She said she heard screams from near the buses and saw a man in his late 50s grabbing a boy while holding a knife.

The bus attendant and parents subdued the attacker with the help of an umbrella and a bag, it said.

The school bus belonged to Suzhou Japanese School, which is located less than a mile away from the area where a sizable Japanese population lives.

The Jiangsu province neighbourhood hosts many manufacturing plants for Japanese companies.

While knife attacks on foreigners have increased recently stabbing attacks are not uncommon in China, the country which has tight gun control laws.

“Recently, stabbings have been reported in public places (parks, schools, subways, etc) throughout China,” the Japanese consulate in Shanghai said in a statement.

In May, a knife attack at a hospital in southwestern China killed two people and injured 21 others.

In July 2023, six people, three of them young children, were killed after a man went on a stabbing spree at a kindergarten in southern China.

The 25-year-old man went on a rampage in the town of Lianjiang, in Guangdong province.